Harald Fairhah^ 151 



Denmark had been very favourably disposed towards 

 some of the Christian prelates of North Germany ; more 

 especially to the celebrated Archbishop of Hamburg, 

 Saint Ansgar; and by the intercourse which arose 

 between the peoples, the ideas of the Christians on 

 secular as well as on relifiious matters filtered into 

 Denmark. The Danish kings established a system of 

 land-holding which was more or less feudal in character; 

 and as the kings of Viken were such near neighbours 

 to Denmark, and as Harald himself was allied to the 

 royal line of that country, we can easily understand 

 how he, too, may have adopted the same ideas. 



AVhat is certain is, that Harald, as soon as his power 

 was firmly established, set himself to dispossess the 

 landowners of Norway from their freehold-, or, as it is 

 called, their udal-tenure, and to make himself nominally 

 owner of the whole land of the country, turning the 

 former freeholders into his tenants or vassals. This 

 was a most momentous change, and one v/hich had a 

 lasting influence ; for it transferred all the waste lands 

 to the possession of the crown. But in what it de- 

 signed to effect, the change of the freehold tenants 

 into vassals, it was much too sweeping, much too 

 impolitic ; as a matter of fact, Harald utterly failed 

 to enforce it ; and his action in this matter of land- 

 tenure led to the fall of his own dynasty. In truth 

 Harald, like many innovators, was not consistent in his 

 policy. If he had sought to make himself the feudal 

 monarch of all Norway, he ought to have abolished, in 

 respect to his own crown, the old Norse laws of succes- 

 sion, which gave all sons, legitimate or bastard, an 

 equal claim upon the property of their father, and 



